I can't put my new computer online until I have imported my accumulated emails (much less than 10% of what I receive) into my new computer. If I don't do this, gmail will erase all my emails, because it's synchronized to my computer. Both old & new computers use Windows 7.

I've tried Windows Easy Transfer.

I've tried exporting from within Windows Live Mail.

I've tried saving the email files from:
c:\USERS\(my computer name)\AppData\Local\Microsoft
to a flash drive, then copying them to the new computer.

Reading on down the page of the link, apparently this did not work for the guy needing to move Windows Live Mail to another computer. Also, it's unclear whether, if it works, it won't create a problem some months later.

I'm currently planning to attach my OLD computer hard drive to my NEW computer via an external dock, and try to copy files over AGAIN.

I may replace the entire Microsoft section in
C:\USERS\(my computer name)\AppData\Local\Microsoft
with the same stuff from my old computer.

I'm using clones for both systems, so if it fails again, I've lost only the time to make new clones.

I'm wondering whether I'm having no luck with "official" methods because I have around 1500 emails. I thinned them out a few months ago; I could get them below 1000 without losing important stuff, but probably not below 500.

When I tried before to export emails out of Windows Live Mail, it exported only ONE email (attempted this several times).

Then I deleted lots of emails, including the one likely irregular email that exported before. Now WLM export works (mostly). I'm committed now, because I've connected to Gmail, after importing the old emails into WLM on the new computer.

After deleting lots of emails, I still had around 2,000 left, because of a community political issue I'm involved with (the State wants to force us to drive TWO MILES further each time we enter or leave the community via its only entrance/exit, despite their earlier promises to the contrary.)

The other approach I tried to transfer the emails was to copy the email files to the new computer via Explorer and a flash drive. That never worked for me. Presumably, if I had more info on just what to copy, it could work. In the past, I moved Outlook Express emails via Explorer with no problem.

Anyway, I got most of the emails transferred, but not the contacts, which I can reconstruct without too much pain.

I believe that WLM export is the best approach for most folks who move on to another computer using WLM.

If you want to transfer Windows Live Mail files from your old computer to new computer, without the hassle of saving it into a flash / USB drive, you can use various web conferencing and file transfer services such as webex.com, gomeetnow.com, gotomeeting.com etc.

I've managed to exprt and subsequently import all email folders onto another hardrive, but when I open say messages sent, all are there but with a file reference and not the name of the person to whom I sent them, making it imposible to find the mail I may be looking for. How do I correct this?